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*SOL/IR* 




CHAS. H. POPE. 



Farmington, Maine, U. S. A. 



SOLAR ENGINERY. 



An Open Field for Practical Operations. 

[Deferred Paper. J 

The day has come when men of hard sense 
and purely business habits may take up this 
subject, with no danger of being called vision- 
ary. The use of sun-heat is to-day exactly 
where the art of steam-enginery was on that 
October morning when Fulton set sail up the 
Hudson, in the year ^807. Scientific men have 
gone over the whole ground of the principles in- 
volved and the lines in which the solar force 
may be used. A respectable number of experi- 
menters have covered a very wide range of meth- 
ods and apnlications : and a small number have 
sought government protection for their investi- 
gations in the art. Tne region in our own coun- 
try where peculiar demand exists for solar en- 
gines and stoves is extensively opened by rail- 
roads ; and untold wealth of gold and silver and 
other valuable minerals awaits the application 
of this least expensive of all motors; 
while millions of square miles of land, now prac- 
tically desert, will yield as much grain as all our 
country now produces, so soon as settlers may 
procure 

Engines Whicli IVeed ]Vo Fuel 
with which to pump water for irrigation, and 
stoves, as cheaply run for domestic use. 

The area ot California, Arizona. Nevada,Utah, 
"Wyoming and New Mexico, is 710,000 square 
miles, equal to that of all the United States east 
of the Mississippi river, except Wisconsin and 
Michigan. The overwhelming majority of those 
miles are destitute of trees or shrubs of any size, 
because of their exposure to clear sunlight three- 
quarters of the days of the year. Several belts 
of precious metals cross them, the larger part of 
which are undeveloped to-day for lack of wood 
or coal for the fuel of hoisting or pumping or re- 
ducing works. All their land accessible to 
coal fields, or forest-belts or watered by sufficient 
rain to support vegetation the entire year .is more 
than offset bv "desert lands" within the limits of 



Oregon, Idaho, Dakota and Colorado; so that 
the measure given above fairly represents the 
region which has too much sunshine. Yet water 
for irrigation is within easy pumping reach, and 
even alkali deserts have been found fertile ; while 
even those valleys now producing great harvests 
will multiply their production greatly under irri- 
gation. And the sun's force is the hope of all 
that Western world. 

And the business men who now manufacture or 
sell steam engines, pumps, stoves and similar ar- 
ticles to customers thousands of miles away, 
need not hesitate to put brains ati^ capital into 
this new line of goods. An immense market will 
fairly devour them as quickly as convenient ma- 
chines are offered for sale. 

In the present article the writer proposes to go 
over the history of this subject in a way to help 
those who have no time for the reading of many 
books or the search of scientific or patent records. 

In 1874; the writer gave the spare minutes of a 
busy professional life to studies in the reflection 
and refraction of heat. With a set of burning 
glasses from 2^ inches to 8§ inches in diameter, 
he burned paper, wood and coal, melted antimony 
glance and zinc plate ; carefully noting, among 
other things, the size of the spot (focal ring) 
over which a given degree of heat could be pro- 
duced ; the largest lens mentioned burning out a 
disc of paper as large as a dollar, at a flash. 
Then turning to reflectors, he was struck by the 
perfection with which the light of a lamp is re- 
flected in parallel lines by locomotive headlights. 
"What will fetch will carry," thought he. So he 
borrowed one of these reflectors, set it up on a 
rude frame in his back yard; placed a tube of 
galvanized iron plate in the place made for the 
lamp ; and had the delight of seeing a quart of 
water boil in five minutes, solely by solar heat ! 
Following out this iead,with numerous other ex- 
periments, he reached certain conclusions of a 
practical sort as to apparatus for utilizing the 
heat of the sun for mechanical and domestic 
purposes, and in April, 1875, filed a caveat to 
protect his work ; but on further investigation he 
found that a great deal had already been done in 
this direction of which he had been ignorant, — 
disgracefully ignorant perhaps, — and that two 
things were demanded, at that stage of the art, 
neither of which he possessed; namely, mechan- 
ical skill and capital. So he abandoned all ex- 
pectation in the patent line, contenting himself 



with general studv of the subject ; and row for 
the first time offers to the public an appeal for 
this pair of requisites, on the ground that the 
field is fully ripe. 
The first theorist on 

Solarlcg, 

(a term the writer ventures to coin to describe 
the subject of the utilization of solar heat), ap- 
pears to have been the famous mathematician, 
Euclid; the first practical experimenter, so far 
as known, the learned King Archimedes, who 
set fire to a fleet of Roman ships, which lay in 
the harbor of Syracuse,by concentrating sunlight 
on their tarred wood and rigging. Hero, De- 
Cause, Saussure, Evans, Poillet and Melloni 
followed on in the centuries, with what special 
results we do not learn But in 1747 toe renowned 
naturalist, Buffon, made a valuable series of ex- 
periments to prove that Archimedes could have 
done what the Latin historian, Livy, had record- 
ed of him . 

He built a large framework on which he hung 
pieces of silvered glass, whose reflections were 
all turned en a given point. Then he varied the 
number of mirrors and the distances of the 
things to be burned, and the combustibles them- 
selves and reached the following results : 

With 17 mirrors at 20 feet, he healed thin 
pieces of silver and iron to redness. 

With 45 mirrors at 20 feet, he melted a pewter 
flask of 6 pounds weight. 

With 128 mirrors at 150 feet, he burned a 
tarred plank. 

With 154 mirrors at 150 feet he made a tarred 
plank smoke in two minutes, when the sKy was 
obscured. 

With 154 mirrors at 250 feet, he burned chips 
of wood covered with charcoal and sulphur. 

He after .vard formed a spherical burning mirror 
having a diameter of forty-six inches, with which 
he performed other wonderful experiments. In 
1764 B. F. Belidor published the results of some 
investigations of his on the subject of solar heat, 
at Amsterdam, without materially advancing 
the matter, however. In 1838 Sir John Herschell 
gave his attention to this subject,and at the Cape 
of Good Hope proved for himself and those who 
read his testimony, that there is a tremendous 
energy in the sun's rays v/hich man may appro- 
priate for his uses. 

1 have not been abl« to discover any applica- 



6 

tion for a patent on any sort of sun-utilizing 
machine earlier than the year 1854,wh6n, in Lon- 
don Antoine Poncon thus announces his claim : 
"My invention consists in using the sun's rays to 
create a vacuum in a suitable vessel, elevated at 
the height of a column of water; which, in the 
above vacuum, is kept in equilibrinm by the 
pressure of the atmosphere. Such vacuum be- 
ing formed, I till it with wafer acted upon by the 
externa] pressnre of the atmosphere, and thus 
obtain a head of water which may be 
applied as a motive power." Unfortunately 
one can learn nothing more of thi'sjirst patentee 
in salaries ; but his registered wisdom is very 
suggestive for others, it cannot, however, be said 
that he ofters any practical solution of the problem. 
In a similar way, the patent records of England 
present us with discourses on the utilizing of the 
sun's heat, in the certificates of Mclvor in 1865, 
and of Culborne and St. George a little later. 
Mclvor's patent is chiefly on the subject of stor- 
ing up the force of the concussion of ships, rail- 
way cars, surf, etc., through the use of coiled 
sprinsrs ; but he put on record this glowing sen- 
timent : "Although steam is a wonderful power, 
« « « * yet at some future day it will be 
looked upon as insignificant compared with the 
stupendous powers which nature has placed at 
our disposal, free of cost, and 

Inviting Our Appropriation. 

For example, the sun, whose heat,concentrat(d 
by powerful lenses revolving by clock-work so 
as to be constantly in focus," will do mighty 
things for man ; and to show how wide the scope 
of this force is, he mentions that on the line of the 
Madras railroad, where he was then stationed, in 
employ of the British government, "on the aver- 
age we have two hundred and eighty bright days 
in a year ; when the unconcentrated heat of the 
sun is all the way from 120^ to 160° Fahrenheit," 
(a statement, by the the way, which suggests 
California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.) 
But five years before Captain Mclvor had filed 
this paper in England, namely in 1860, a Profes- 
sor of mathematics in the Lycee d'Alencon at 
Tours in France had 

Actually Invented 
a solar machine, and made practical use of his 
discoveries. Without gaining— or seeking— the 
attention of the general public or of the business 
world, he pursued his experiments for several 



years, aided by the government to some degree, 
from regard to the prospect that sun-engines 
might hring great wealth out of Algeria. 

In 1871 the French patent records show the 
mark of this inventor, the first in this depart- 
ment fassociating it witli philosophical and kin- 
dred apparatus, "Instruments de precision.") In 
72 Mouchot filed an additional certificate in 
which he shows more fully the plan he has since 
perfected ; and in 1875 he obtained a third patent, 
under which he is now operating. In '77 he al- 
so obtained an English patent, covering the same 
ground. 

He has never applied for a patent under our 
laws. The great conical reflector which he 
first erected in the court yard of the Library at 
Tours in May, 1875, he afterward exhibited 
at the World's Fair in Paris in 1878, 
where thousands loekcd on with astonish- 
ment while they saw a steady stream of wat- 
er pouring forth from a pump whose only motor 
was a bundle of sunbeams ! and since that time 
he has constructed a number of other machines 
which are now used in Algeria, raising water 
from wells in the deserts, for irrigation and for 
domestic purposes. 

It must be acknowledged that 

Augustin If ernard I^Ioucliot 
is to be ranked with Watt, Stephenson, Fulton, 
Morse, Bell, and their like ; as one of those not- 
able benefactors of mankind, who have, at great 
pains, brousrht grand forces and processes oiU of 
the empirical into the practical stage. After all 
due honor has been given to the ancient and 
modern experimenters in solar science, Mouchot 
deserves credit as having first established the 

Art of Solar Hiig;lnery ; 

bringing the sun, as a motive power within easy 
reach of the working world. Although nis par- 
ticular ways of reflecting and applying the force 
of the sun's rays may not prove the best; though 
Yankee ingenuity may some day make machines 
as far superior to his as the latest trans-Atlantic 
sreamship is to that in which Fulton made his 
first voyage ; still he is the world's benefactor iu 
the way I have stated ; but no one can estimate 
to-day the magnificance of the New World into 
which this greater than Columbus has led us. 

Meanwhile on tnis side of the Atlantic, a few 
persons had been at work, none, however, with 



8 

anything like M. Mouchot's singleness of pur- 
pose and untiring persistence. 

Capt. John Ericsson, that great mechanic whom 
Sweden gave us, [appendix A] constructed en- 
gines of five-inch cylinder and six inch stroke, 
running them at a speed as high as three hun- 
dred revolutions a minute with sun power; using 
in some cases air and in others steam, at a tem- 
perature of 480°. His studies and discoveries in 
the use of hot air as a motor, kept him alive to 
the value of the sun as a producer of energy. 
He stated that the heat concentrated from one 
hundred square feet of surface would evaporate 
489 inches of water; more than equivalent to one 
horse-power. But the writer has been unable to 
find any date or description of the method of the 
experiments he made, or the record of any patent 
he took out under this topic of solar heat. Yet 
he contributed greatly to the interest of the sci- 
entific world by his expressions of interest in it, 
and his predictions of its immense employment in 
the near future. 

The earliest patent given by our government 
for invention in this department, runs to John S« 
Hittell and G. W. Deitzler oi San Francisco, Cal- 
ifornia, under date of March 20th, 1877. 

On the 27th of April, 1880, the second United 
States patent for a "Solar Heater" was obtained 
by James P. Mauzey of Blackfoot, Montana, and 
May 19th, lb82, Mr. Deitzler took out an addi- 
tional patent, covering some points in advance 
of his former one (with Mr. Hittell). 

San Francisco parties have also sought British 
protection ; Eusebius J. Molera and John C. Ge- 
brian having obtained a patent Oct. 22d, 1880, for 
"Boilers , condensers and apparatus connected 
therewith, for utilizing the heat contained in 
solar rays, thermal springs, mines, or the like." 
[Appendix D."| 

We thus have eleven patents running to ten 
individuals, four patents being; upon the works 
of one man, M. Mouchot: four others to as many- 
firms or individuals ; and three which are not 
strictly inventions, but ought rather to be group- 
ed with that caveat of which mention was made 
above as 

Anuouncement of Plans to Invent* 

In addition to these persons there is one who 
deserves very honorable mention — Mr. W. 
Adams of Bombay, India, who communicated to 
the Scientific American (June 15th, 1878,) a spir- 



9 



ited account of some mo8t practical things he 
had done in the use of solar heat as a cooking 
agent. 

How many others have helped forward this 
work quien sabe ? As the writer has never had 
the honor of personal acquaintance or correspon- 
dence with a single individual who hass given it 
critical attention, and has had but limited oppor- 
tunity of reading the class of publications whick 
might naturally chronicle such labors, he can 
claim to offer no complete history or analysis of 
the topic, but a contribution to the subject; which 
may help tiny who desire to work in this depart- 
ment, and may draw out much more valuable 
©fferings from those better qualified. [Appendix 
C] 

How, now, can the heat of the sun be captured ? 
Molera and Ctbrian say : "Take it as it comes ;" 
and they put all their skill into the construction 
of boilers consisting essentially of two parallel 
shells, suitably connected, and having betwen 
them a narrow space which is filled with the liq- 
uid to be vaporized and to drive the engines. 
They are placed horizontally, and do not require 
to he changed in their position according to the 
daily movement of the earth* ** As they ex- 
pose a large surface to the source of heat * * * 
the generation of the vapor is very rapid. "Sim- 
ilar vessels are used for the condensation of the 
vapor, the temperature being reduced by the use 
of snow or ice." 

But other inventors feel the necessity of some 
process which will bring the rays of the sun 
more or less perfectly to a focus. A flat mirror, 
slanted a little, gives a lint or patch of heat. 
Perhaps Archimedes burned the Roman fleet by 
stationing many "groups of men along the shore, 
holding up huge plates of polished orass, each 
of which sent its hot mass of reflected rays 
against the common mark. Buffon used nu- 
merous flit pieces arranged on a framework, 
such that one person could move it all together 
and concentrate their force. Mauzey, in this 
way, grouped mirrors of curved forms into one 
complex reflector. [Appendix D.] Mouchot first 
employed a number of concave mirrors for pro- 
ducing heat sufficient for mechanical purposes ; 
but later adopted the truncated cone with which 
his great successes have been reached. In the 
centre of this cone he erects a bell-glass, under 
which he places a copper boiler of similar form, 
whose outer surface is blackened. This boiler 



10 

is double-walled and has tubes wliich bring in 
water and carry out the steam through the bot- 
tom of the reflector, to be used as in common 
steam engines. A system of cog-and-screw 
gearing is used to keep the reflector 
facing the sun all the day. Hittell and Deitzler 
show a slightly concave mirror with which they 
throw focalized heat "upon a mass of iron or 
other suitable material" "as a reservoir of the 
heat;" "a reservoir chamber, a heat-box, a dry- 
ing chamber, and a devaporizing chamber," let- 
ting cold air pass in and then pass out after the 
sun has heated it ; applying it then to ordinary 
hot-air machinery. Deitzler, in his second 
patent, proposes a reflecting mirror, straight one 
way, curved the other, — half of a tube or cylin- 
der, if you please; and in the hot line-focus, 
thus formed, he places a tube filled with the ma- 
terial to be heated. He uses the common methods 
to keep the reflector facing the sun. Mr. Adams 
arranged one hundred and ninety-eight panes of 
glass, silvered on one side, in a framework, and 
placed a boiler, containing nine gallons of cold 
water, at the focus, twenty feet away. In thirty 
minutes it began to boil ; atter one hour's boiling 
he found that three and a half gallons had evap- 
orated. He afterward made a reflector some- 
what like Mouchot's, — six-sided instead of cir- 
cular, — and in an enclosed boiler cooked various 
articles. "The rations of seven soldiers, consist- 
ing of meat and vegetables, cooked thoroughly 
in two hours ;" and throwing a rug over the ap- 
paratus all kept hot for hours. A leg of mut- 
ton was perfectly cooked in it, and kept piping 
hot two hours by similar covering. 

Perhaps burning-glasses, double convex lenses, 
may have practical value for the pui-pose we are 
considering; wonderful things have been done 
with them in experiments. But as theyfocalize the 
rays only on one side of the object to be heated, 
while reflectors may concentrate heat on several 
or all sides of it ; a decided preference has been 
shown for the reflectors.by all who have produced 
truly practical results. Yet in the infancy of the 
art no one can safely dogmatize against any of 
the methods by which philosophers have brought 
solar heat into service. 

Another practical question is 

TS.ow ILiarge May Solar £ngines Be Made 1 

The head-light reflector spoken of was twenty- 
one inches in diameter and of the same depth ; 



11 

Mouchot's truncated cone exhibited at Paris was 
one hundred and twelve inches in diameter and 
thirty-six inches deep, having an area of forty- 
five square feet. Ericsson considers every one 
hundred feet of sunshine capable of yielding 
one horse-power ; an estimate which was made 
in the humid climate of an Atlantic State, and 
which takes no account of the greater heat of the 
sun in regions further south or having a drier 
climate, nor of the accumulation of heat when 
reflected through successive hours. But at that 
rate we should have reflectors of circular base, 
having 11.3 feet diameter, give 1 horse-power : 
16 feet, 2 horse-power; 19.4 feet, 3 horse-power; 
22.7 feet, 4 horse-power ; 25.33 feet, 5 horse-power ; 
35.4 feet, 10 horse-power ; 50 feet, 20 horse-power. 

Of course much judgment and skill will have 
to be used in balancing and bracing and revolv- 
ing reflectors, in the windy regions where their 
largest use must be; but it need not be very 
costly to do all that. The material must be care- 
fully studied ; pure silver plating being the finest 
reflecting surface, and lime or gypsum "white- 
wash" having surprising value for the purpose ; 
with a great range of substances between them. 
Whether to surrounding the reflector with non- 
conducting substances, like asbestos felting; 
whether to cover the mouth of the reflector with 
glass, to keep in its gathered heat ; whether to 
erect separate reflectors (along a hillside or oth- 
erwise) and converge their force on one spot, 
simple provisions like Mons. Mouchot's guard- 
ing the central boiler from any loss of what it 
thus receives ; and what form is best for the re- 
ceiver itself, in which the heat is to become a 
motor : to these points practical sense must be 
brought, and hundreds of good methods will 
doubtless be found. 

The government may profitably use numbers 
of solar furnaces at its military garrisons and 
Indian reservations ; the trans-continental railroad 
companies, also, may employ many of them for 
their stations, and greatly increase the value of 
their lands by developing this motor. 

That which has made deserts may become the 
very means of reclaiming them ; and in regions 
where the sky is clear only a minority of the 
days of the year, sunshine may be used 
as an occasional auxiliary for many purposes. 
Considering the rapid diminishing of our forests 
and the tremendous drafts now making on our 
coal fields, we ought to lose no time in availing 



12 



ourselves of this most freely offered and cheaply 
available resoarce; since it has been absolutely 
proved that it is wholly practicable, and wants 
only the touch of that manufacturing energy 
which distinguishes our country. 

Charles H. Pope. 
Farmington, March 22d, 1883. 

heiflf^h^l.t'T^^^l''^'^'' demonstrated that the 
f«^i i *!^ ^"^' shining on a square mile of sur- 
ill' ^i^es power enough to drive 64,800 engines 
h^?f n/th^^'^^r^ horse-power; usins onlT onl' 
vofr^ fh^^ surface for gathering the heat, and dl 
ASvm^^'^^'^T'J®''-'*^ imildings, roads.' etc 

Solmre." In its best form, this wasaconSlmir 
ror of sdver.plated brass ;'at its focus rglassaTsh" 
with cover of the same, in which artic es to hP 
mher'^ihlf " Pla^ed-vegetables, bruits meats and 
other things-were successfully cooked in thesp 

hTs'Si* "'V ""^^"^ ^f *^^ coventrated he. t of 
K ! J"^"; *F example, a kilogramme loaf of 
Ss 'dfsrtep^/Zh''^ of iron,an% enclosed in the 
hours thoroughly in less than three 

hat sS-'''-Thr,tn f] ?°^?'-^ writer on invention 
nassaid. "The most talentea man can make but 

eitio^I'^^'t^ "^li"^. ^^^^ ^^ ^'^ ^^« individual el 
SvnffhoiL ^Stowing some time upon the 
m?u.^,^12^ ^^^^""^ ""^ "".^^^^S' '^e may conVbine a 
Rhmt^^Lrf^''''^y.V^^ ^^^ great mechanicaal 
hhr designs " ""^^ ^ """''^ ^'^^^^ ^° P^^^P^^ ^^^ 

erfwe^SniPnT^^- ^^*f " ^^« attracted consid- 
ofr«iffSa''.»*'r^'^^^^^"^^«'^ the "Resources 
. « * <-'a|irornia ," by a magazine article on thp 
"Apotheosis of Steam." Of the other Anierican 
patentees the writer has no knowledge! ^"^^"^^" 
..^i^'^\~^?K^^JP^^ w^o have taste and leisure for 
snup, ""V^' ^^"^ f^^lowing list of works to be con- 
sulted 18 given: Knight's American Mechanical 
Dictionary, Appleton's Cyclopedia of Applied 
SS°ffs/^^'^'%^^°^^^P^'«^lJ^i«tionaryuS 
?PJ'^^"',^®/^^^'"e^^8 I^eux Mondes, May, 1876 
L.'Emploi Industnel de La Chaleur Solrire, par 
^n ^ir^^"?^f"'^? [Translation of the same in Pop. 
Sc. Monthly Vol. 17, page 555] The Scientiflr 
American of July 14th.*1877, of ^ne 15th, % 
and of Feb. -1883. fEccl. Engin. Vols 3 4 

?87V ^F^rVfr?>'^ ^.^'"^^ V^««^^« f«" 1871 and 
and 1 filo TT l^^'^ent records for 1854, 1865, 1877 
«m??ft«9' ^^f^-^^^^.'^\ records for 1877, 1880, 
P«li?^£:. ^V^ possible that German and foreign 
but rSprP n^J "^^ xniffht fumish important mattir, 
Pr'« te^^'^t^^'i'''^*''' helps to shorten the search! 
tLrJ ^^'J^ ^^®. ^^^'^J^ ^as no knowledge of 
them. Perhaps other books and papers contain 

?^S l^^oF^^'""^^ ^^f ®« ^^ industrial expositions, 
Illustrated journals, etc.. etc. No bibliography of 

Jhewr&now^^^'''^'^^'^^"*^"^'^^'^^ "^ - 






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